Last Call For Weathering The Storm

The AP's Adrian Sainz and Bruce Schreiner report on Eastern Kentucky's recovery from the devastating night of December tornadoes that claimed 81 lives, dozens in the town of Mayfield alone.

 

Audible evidence of rebuilding in Mayfield has been difficult to miss: the cracking and crashing of excavators breaking apart wood and glass, the beep-beep-beep of heavy machinery reversing, the popping of roofers’ nail guns.

In an AP interview, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said removing debris and finding temporary housing were early priorities after the tornado. More recently, attention has turned to keeping residents in Kentucky.

“These are towns that have almost been wiped off the map,” Beshear said. “We will continue to be concerned about getting people back on their feet and concerned about not losing the population of these towns.”

Some have moved to more permanent shelter, including travel trailers, the governor said. In Graves County, tiny homes were approved for displaced residents, and several larger homes are being built in Mayfield, emergency management Director Tracy Warner said.

“We really hold the future of Mayfield and Graves County in our hands,” Warner said. “And that is scary, yet exciting.”

Although there’s cause for optimism, progress remains slow in places. In Dawson Springs, where Bullock and her family now live in a camper, the 54-year-old registered nurse said she has seen just a few houses being rebuilt, and some friends say they won’t stay.

Bullock and her husband had paid off their home but didn’t have insurance. A disaster-response charity is helping them build a new house on their property, and Bullock hopes to see a day when their family gatherings resume.

“Sundays were fun days. ... I just want to have that again,” she said.

Beshear, a Democrat, said millions in housing assistance payments from a state relief fund are being distributed. About $64 million in federal assistance has been approved for storm victims in Kentucky, with some aid targeting temporary housing, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.

Recovery will take “a couple of years, but it shouldn’t take any longer,” Beshear said. “There are days that it’s a little more frustrating, ... but we are going to get this done.”

 

The recovery effort in Eastern Kentucky has been arguably the one thing Kentucky Republicans haven't heavily politicized as a weapon against Beshear, mainly because the damage was so widespread in areas that are heavily rural and Republican.  But as Beshear said, the recovery will still take years to complete.

The bigger problem is that more nights like this are coming as climate change revs up storm fronts into tornado-spawning nightmare fuel across the country, with more damage, more devastation, and more deaths. It will only get worse in the months and years ahead.

The Buckeye Purge, Con't

As Joshua Douglas in Washington Monthly points out, the deliberate plot by the Ohio GOP to continue to put forth unconstitutional 2022 redistricting maps has now resulted in Trump federal judges declaring that Ohio is now out of time and that the state must be forced to accept an unconstitutional, highly gerrymandered map that will give Ohio Republicans 12 of 15 districts with 51 percent of the vote.

Since this redistricting cycle began, the commission has adopted maps on a party line vote no fewer than four times. And each time, the Ohio Supreme Court, on a 4–3 vote (with Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor joining three Democratic justices), has ruled the maps unlawful under the state constitution because of their partisan tilt. The maps, the court found, violated the simple command of the Ohio Constitution: “No general assembly district plan shall be drawn primarily to favor or disfavor a political party.” The remedy is for the commission to produce a map that does not enable the Republican Party to win more seats than its share of support in the state.

But instead of calling for the commission to do its job and create a lawful map, last week a federal court intervened to impose an extraordinary remedy: Unless the commission passes a new, legal map by May 28, the state must use one of the discarded maps for the 2022 election. Essentially, the federal court required the state to use an unconstitutional map.

The federal court’s 2–1 ruling—with two judges appointed by President Donald Trump in the majority—expressed concern that, if the redistricting dispute continued, the state would not hold a primary for state legislative races, depriving Ohio voters of their constitutional right to vote. To remedy that concern, the court said it was choosing the best option it could: a map that the state’s election machinery had begun to implement before the Ohio Supreme Court ruled it unlawful. The court decided that the commission’s third map was the best option, even though the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that one—and the subsequent fourth map—was in violation of the state constitution’s command to avoid excessive partisanship.

There was no reason for the federal court to step in here. The Ohio Supreme Court had ordered the commission to produce a new map by May 6, a deadline it could still meet. The idea that the Ohio Supreme Court or the commission would leave Ohio voters without a primary is pure speculation. The federal judges paid lip service to state’s rights, overreaching to impose a map that the state’s highest court determined violates the state constitution.

The federal court’s decision produces perverse incentives for the Republican members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission. They know that if they run out the clock, they can use a gerrymandered map they like. Why would they draw a lawful map now? This same cycle of judicial activism will likely repeat itself in 2024: Republicans will enact an illegal map, the Ohio Supreme Court will order them to produce a lawful one, and, eventually, a federal court can allow the state to use the unconstitutional map anyway.

The dissent, in this case, agreed that the federal court should step in but thought the court should require the state to implement a different map produced by redistricting experts that is consistent with the Ohio Constitution. But that solution still presumes that the federal court has a role in this case. At this stage—with no true threat of a fully canceled election—it simply doesn’t. Although the state already had to delay the primary for state legislative races until August because of this redistricting impasse, there is no evidence that further delays are imminent. The dissent also failed to recognize that the Ohio Supreme Court had already ordered the commission to produce a lawful map by May 6, which is enough time for the August primary.

The federal court’s decision is baffling on many levels. The concern that Ohio will not have a primary is based on conjecture, nothing more. And to fix that supposed problem, the court ordered the state to use an unlawful map. The decision defies the will of the voters, who passed a state constitutional amendment in 2015 to thwart gerrymandering and gamesmanship in redistricting—in the name of protecting the constitutional right to vote. But voters aren’t the ones protected here. Incumbent politicians are the actual beneficiaries of the federal courts’ overreach because they can run in districts that will help them win reelection.

The decision is appealable to the U.S. Supreme Court, but we know how that would likely go, given the current Court’s extreme deference to those in power. The federal courts in 2022 are no friends of everyday voters. Apparently, using an unconstitutional map is better than ordering the commission to produce a fair one or letting the state court manage this issue of state law. So much for federalism. For federal courts considering voting rights, once again, up is down.

The best case scenario is a new map that only gives Republican 11 of 15 House seats in the state. The worst case is an even more gerrymandered map that gives 12 or 13 of 15 of Ohio's US House seats to the GOP with 50% of the popular vote.

Democracies don't survive that, folks.

The Trans-Siberian Railroading

If you thought for a microsecond that Republicans would stop at criminalizing gender affirming healthcare for teens, I regret I have to inform you that the straights are going after trans adults now.

 

Missouri lawmakers this week while debating a bill seeking to restrict access to gender-affirming care for minors suggested access to medical interventions like hormones be withheld from transgender and nonbinary individuals until at least their 25th birthday.

During a public hearing Thursday for Missouri’s House Bill 2649, Laurie Haynes, a psychologist, testified that she believes young adults under the age of 25 are unable to fully comprehend the “dramatic and drastic and irreparable” changes their bodies will undergo if they receive gender-affirming medical treatments like puberty blockers or hormone therapies.

Haynes on Thursday also said she supported conversion therapy.

Medical research has suggested that the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain responsible for executive functions like decision making – is not fully developed until roughly the age of 25.

Currently, the bill, which is officially titled the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, only applies to individuals younger than 18 years old. Missouri physicians and health care providers under the bill would be prevented from providing or recommending gender-affirming care to patients who are minors.

On Thursday Rep. Nick Schroer (R) argued that the legislature had previously invoked brain maturity in deciding whether the state should raise the age for being charged as an adult in criminal cases from 17 to 18.

“The brains of especially males are still developing into their twenties and I don’t understand why that’s not part of the discussion here,” he said.

It’s an argument made by lawmakers and officials in other conservative states, and Florida’s Health Department this week said gender-affirming care in any form – including social transition – should not be made available to children younger than 18 years old, citing brain maturity.

 

At 18 you can vote, join the military and shoot people in the name of your country, but "brain maturity".

 

That's not the salient point though, first of all bringing in a conversion therapist to testify as an expert witness is abhorrent. Second of all, using that testimony to justify withholding healthcare from adults across the board is horrific. "You can't be trans until 25" will become 30, 35, never, and even 25 means trans kids will suffer for years, and that suffering will be codified into law.

Every one of these monsters deserves to be tossed out of office if not tossed into the sun.

Last Call For Tech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself, Con't

The Elon Musk purchase of Twitter is a done deal.

Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk, for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion. Upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately held company.

Under the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock that they own upon closing of the proposed transaction. The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter's closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter.

Bret Taylor, Twitter's Independent Board Chair, said, "The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon's proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter's stockholders."

Parag Agrawal, Twitter's CEO, said, "Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important."

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," said Mr. Musk. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."

 

Which raises the question of what happened to make Twitter's Board of Directors pull a 180 and all, as the deal was off as of late last week.

 

What happened was Republican thuggery.

A group of 18 House Republicans is asking Twitter’s board to preserve all records related to Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company, setting up a potential congressional probe should the party win back the majority this fall.

In letters shared exclusively with CNBC, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee asked Twitter Board Chairman Bret Taylor and other members of the board to preserve any messages from official or personal accounts, including through encryption software, that relate to Twitter’s consideration of Musk’s offer.

“As Congress continues to examine Big Tech and how to best protect Americans’ free speech rights, this letter serves as a formal request that you preserve all records and materials relating to Musk’s offer to purchase Twitter, including Twitter’s consideration and response to this offer, and Twitter’s evaluation of its shareholder interests with respect to Musk’s offer,” said the letter, led by ranking member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

“You should construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to prevent the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently, of all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that is or may be potentially responsive to this congressional inquiry,” the letter continued.

The request signals that should Republicans take back the majority in the House in the 2022 midterm elections, they may launch an investigation into Twitter, especially if the company declines to take the offer from Musk, who’s CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Under Republican control, the House Judiciary Committee could decide to subpoena records about the board’s internal deliberations.

It’s not the first time Twitter has caught the attention of Republican lawmakers.

The platform has become a focal point for some conservative members who’ve charged that Twitter unfairly removes or moderates posts on ideological grounds. Twitter has denied doing so and says it enforces standards based on its community guidelines.

In the letter to Taylor dated Friday, the lawmakers wrote: “Decisions regarding Twitter’s future governance will undoubtedly be consequential for public discourse in the United States and could give rise to renewed efforts to legislate in furtherance of preserving free expression online. Among other things, the Board’s reactions to Elon Musk’s offer to purchase Twitter, and outsider opposition to Musk’s role in Twitter’s future are concerning.” 

 

In other words, House Republicans told Twitter on Friday that if they didn't sell to Musk, they would face a congressional investigation when the GOP took the House back next year.

 

So they sold to Musk. 

Here endeth the lesson.

If It Brings Me To My Knees...

 ...It's a bad religion.

 

Joseph Kennedy, who used to be an assistant coach for a high school football team near Seattle, pointed to the spot on the 50-yard line where he would take a knee and offer prayers after games.

He was wearing a Bremerton Knights jacket and squinting in the drizzling morning rain, and he repeated a promise he had made to God when he became a coach.

“I will give you the glory after every game, win or lose,” he said, adding that the setting mattered: “It just made sense to do it on the field of battle.”

Coaching was his calling, he said. But after the school board in Bremerton, Wash., told him to stop mixing football and faith on the field, he left the job and sued, with lower courts rejecting his argument that the board had violated his First Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case on Monday, and there is good reason to think that its newly expanded conservative majority will not only rule in Mr. Kennedy’s favor but also make a major statement about the role religion may play in public life. The court’s decision, expected by June, could revise earlier understandings about when prayer is permitted in public schools, the rights of government employees and what counts as pressuring students to participate in religious activities.

The two sides offer starkly different accounts of what happened and what is at stake. To hear Mr. Kennedy tell it, he sought only to offer a brief, silent and solitary prayer little different from saying grace before a meal in the school cafeteria. From the school board’s perspective, the public nature of his prayers and his stature as a leader and role model meant that students felt forced to participate, whatever their religion and whether they wanted to or not.

The community in Bremerton appeared to be largely sympathetic to Mr. Kennedy, who is gregarious, playful and popular. But the school board’s Supreme Court brief suggested that some residents opposed to prayer on the football field may have hesitated to speak out given the strong feelings the issue has produced.

“District administrators received threats and hate mail,” the brief said. “Strangers confronted and screamed obscenities at the head coach, who feared for his safety.”

Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represents the school board, said, “What we’re focused on is the religious freedom of students.”

“Going to the 50-yard line directly after the game when you’re the coach, with the students assuming they’re supposed to gather with the coach, and praying at that time puts pressure on kids to join,” she said.

Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that, as time went on, students did join him.

“I started out praying by myself,” he said. “I guarantee it was no longer than 10 seconds.”

When athletes asked to participate, he said he told them that America was a free country.

“It was,” he added, “never any kind of thing where it was a mandatory thing.”

Asked whether some athletes might have felt compelled to join in, he gave a stock response. “I coached for about eight years and there were about 60 kids on the team each year,” he said. “I challenged every news reporter and said: ‘Find somebody.’”

Unfortunately, I agree with Vox's Ian Millihiser: the fact that this case is even being heard with the law clearly favoring the school district makes it clear that in a post Hobby Lobby world, both public and private sector employees are going to be forced by SCOTUS to have to directly accommodate "religious freedoms" of the individual at the direct expense of greater good. 

 

Given that existing law so clearly favors the school district in the Kennedy case, the Supreme Court’s decision to hear this case at all suggests that a majority of the justices are eager to change the law to make it more favorable to government-sanctioned religious activity.

For one thing, when the case reached the Supreme Court in 2019, a total of four justices signed on to Alito’s opinion claiming that a lower court that ruled against Kennedy demonstrated an “understanding of the free speech rights of public school teachers [that] is troubling and may justify review in the future.”

Alito appeared unconcerned that a school official might wield his authority to pressure students into religious exercise. Instead, he fretted that coaches should not be told that their “duty to serve as a good role model requires the coach to refrain from any manifestation of religious faith.”

Less than two years after Alito wrote these words, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and she was replaced by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Almost immediately after Barrett’s confirmation gave Republicans a supermajority on the Supreme Court, the Court’s new majority started handing down transformative new religion decisions granting broad new rights to the religious right.

Thus, while the weight of established law should crush Kennedy’s case, the biggest open question in Kennedy is most likely to be just how much leeway the Court will give public school teachers and coaches to preach their religious beliefs to their students.

 

I expect that leeway to be near absolute.

Le Pen, French Pressed

Emmanuel Macron has easily been re-elected in France, staving off right-wing French nationalist Marine Le Pen in Sunday's election.

 

Emmanuel Macron won a second term as president of France, triumphing on Sunday over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger, after a campaign where his promise of stability prevailed over the temptation of an extremist lurch.

Projections at the close of voting, which are generally reliable, showed Mr. Macron, a centrist, gaining 58.5 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen’s 41.5 percent. His victory was much narrower than in 2017, when the margin was 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent for Ms. Le Pen, but wider than appeared likely two weeks ago.

Speaking to a crowd massed on the Champ de Mars in front of a twinkling Eiffel Tower, a solemn Mr. Macron said his was a victory for “a more independent France and a stronger Europe.” At the same time he acknowledged “the anger that has been expressed” during a bitter campaign and that he had duty to “respond effectively.”

Ms. Le Pen conceded defeat in her third attempt to become president, but bitterly criticized the “brutal and violent methods” of Mr. Macron. She vowed to fight on to secure a large number of representatives in legislative elections in June, declaring that “French people have this evening shown their desire for a strong counter power to Emmanuel Macron.”

At a critical moment in Europe, with fighting raging in Ukraine after the Russian invasion, France rejected a candidate hostile to NATO, to the European Union, to the United States, and to its fundamental values that hold that no French citizens should be discriminated against because they are Muslim.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign minister, said the result reflected “the mobilization of French people for the maintenance of their values and against a narrow vision of France.”

The French do not generally love their presidents, and none had succeeded in being re-elected since 2002. Mr. Macron’s unusual achievement in securing five more years in power reflects his effective stewardship over the Covid-19 crisis, his rekindling of the economy, and his political agility in occupying the entire center of the political spectrum.

Ms. Le Pen, softening her image if not her anti-immigrant nationalist program, rode a wave of alienation and disenchantment to bring the extreme right closer to power than at any time since 1944. Her National Rally party has joined the mainstream, even if at the last minute many French people seem to have voted for Mr. Macron to ensure that France not succumb to the xenophobic vitriol of the darker passages of its history.

Ms. Le Pen is a longtime sympathizer with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom she visited at the Kremlin during her last campaign in 2017. She would almost certainly have pursued policies that weakened the united allied front to save Ukraine from Russia’s assault, offered Mr. Putin a breach to exploit in Europe, and undermined the European Union, whose engine has always been a joint Franco-German commitment to it.

If Brexit was a blow to unity, a French nationalist quasi-exit, as set out in Ms. Le Pen’s proposals, would have left the European Union on life support. That, in turn, would have crippled an essential guarantor of peace on the continent in a volatile moment.

 

The Gallic Republic endures, if only just. If Brexit was the beginning of the end of the EU, a Le Pen win would have been the end of that beginning and would have immediately signaled to the world that the transition into nationalist Europe at war was inevitable, not to mention the end of NATO and the rise of Putinism across the continent.

That still may very well happen in the future, but for now, the stoic and overly pragmatic French have decided that the crook they know if better than the devil they don't, a lesson we Americans had to learn the hard way and are still paying for.

By the way, If Biden had gotten 58% of the popular vote, along with 58 Dem Senate seats and 58% of the House, we'd still be hearing about how Biden had to work with Senate Republicans partners to "pass anything lasting" and that he "must go out of his way to include the views of his opponents" in bill after bill. If Trump had won, his opponents would be jailed.

Last Call For Tech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself, Con't

Twitter shareholders when into revolt this weekend over the company not selling the whole enchilada of the social media platform to billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk for $43 billion so that he could take it private and turn the company into another of his very expensive toys and are now openly forcing the company to reconsider the offer.

Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) is coming under increasing pressure from its shareholders to negotiate with Elon Musk even though the world's richest person has called his $43 billion bid for the social media platform his best and final offer, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.

While the views of Twitter shareholders vary over what a fair price for a deal would be, many reached out to the company after Musk outlined his acquisition financing plan on Thursday and urged it not to let the opportunity for a deal slip away, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. read more

Twitter's board is expected to find that Musk's all-cash $54.20 per share offer for the company is too low by the time it reports quarterly earnings on Thursday. Nonetheless, some shareholders who agree with that stance still want Twitter to seek a better offer from Musk, whose net worth is pegged by Forbes at $270 billion, the sources told Reuters.

One option available to Twitter's board is to open its books to Musk to try to coax him to sweeten his bid. Another would be to solicit offers from other potential bidders. While it is not yet clear which path Twitter will take, it is increasingly likely that its board will attempt to solicit a better offer from Musk even as it rebuffs the current one, the sources said.

"I wouldn't be surprised to wake up next week and see Musk raise what he called his best and final offer to possibly $64.20 per share," one of the fund managers who is invested in Twitter said on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with the company.

"He could also drop the whole thing entirely. Anything is possible," the fund manager said about Musk's offer.

Twitter shares closed at $48.93 on Friday, a significant discount to Musk's offer that reflects the uncertainty over his bid's fate.

 

Indeed, Musk is now coming in with that higher offer.

Twitter Inc. TWTR 3.93% is re-examining Elon Musk’s $43 billion takeover offer after the billionaire lined up financing for the bid, in a sign the social-media company could be more receptive to a deal.

Twitter had been expected to rebuff the offer, which Mr. Musk made earlier this month without saying how he would pay for it. But after he disclosed last week that he now has $46.5 billion in financing, Twitter is taking a fresh look at the offer and is more likely than before to seek to negotiate, people familiar with the matter said. The situation is fast-moving and it is still far from guaranteed Twitter will do so.

Twitter is still working on an all-important estimate of its own value, which would need to come in close to Mr. Musk’s offer, and it could also insist on sweeteners such as Mr. Musk agreeing to cover breakup protections should the deal fall apart, some of the people said.

The two sides are meeting Sunday to discuss Mr. Musk’s proposal, the people said.

Twitter is expected to weigh in on the bid when it reports first-quarter earnings Thursday, if not sooner, the people said. Twitter’s response won’t necessarily be black-and-white, and could leave the door open for inviting other bidders or negotiating with Mr. Musk on terms other than price. Mr. Musk reiterated to Twitter’s chairman Bret Taylor in recent days that he won’t budge from his offer of $54.20-a-share, the people said.

The potential turnabout on Twitter’s part comes after Mr. Musk met privately Friday with several shareholders of the company to extol the virtues of his proposal while repeating that the board has a “yes-or-no” decision to make, according to people familiar with the matter. He also pledged to solve the free-speech issues he sees as plaguing the platform and the country more broadly, whether his bid succeeds or not, they said.

 

We'll see where this goes, but odds are in Musk's favor. If he does pull this off, Twitter is going to be a very different place very quickly, and the changes are not going to be for the better.

The Big Lie, Con't

As of this weekend, the official platform of the Michigan Republican party is that the 2020 election was stolen, that Donald Trump is the rightful resident of the White House, and that their slate of statewide office candidates are committed to proving that.

Michigan Republicans picked two candidates — who deny the 2020 election results and have been endorsed by former President Trump — to serve as the state's next top elections officer and top law enforcement official.

Kristina Karamo, a community college professor who rose to prominence after claiming she saw election fraud in Detroit in the last presidential race, won the three-person race for secretary of state with about 67% of the vote at Saturday's GOP endorsement convention in Grand Rapids. On the November ballot, her opponent will be incumbent Democrat Jocelyn Benson.

Matt DePerno, an attorney who has pushed Trump's false claims of election fraud, won the party's endorsement for attorney general. In a runoff race, DePerno took 54% of the vote to defeat former state House speaker Tom Leonard, who was seen as the more establishment Republican candidate. DePerno is now running against incumbent Democrat Dana Nessel.

Michigan does not hold primary elections for a number of down-ballot races, including the secretary of state — who oversees elections — and attorney general. Instead, Republicans and Democrats endorse and nominate candidates for November's general election at party conventions.

At this weekend's GOP convention, the party voted resoundingly to support former President Trump's false claims about the 2020 election. About 2,000 delegates from across the state participated in the vote.

The convention was seen by many as the first major test of Trump's influence over the 2022 elections. Trump's former campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani attended the convention, as well as MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who has become a leader in the election denial movement.

The former president came to Michigan earlier this month to stump with both Karamo and DePerno.

"This is not just about 2022," Trump said during his visit to the state in early April. "This is about making sure Michigan is not rigged and stolen again in 2024."

Karamo is the first of the many election-denying candidates running in secretary of state races across the U.S to move toward appearing on a state ballot in November. She has also said she doesn't believe evolution should be taught in schools.

Incumbent Democrat Benson faced a torrent of threats and harassment following the 2020 election that echoed Trump's lies about voting in Michigan. Ahead of Saturday's vote, Benson said that she worried about the state of democracy, should the state elect a secretary of state candidate like Karamo, who thinks the 2020 election was stolen.

"It's like putting arsonists in charge of a fire department. It's like putting a bank robber in charge of a bank and giving them the keys to the vault," Benson said. "This is a choice between whether or not we'll have a democracy moving forward."

Looking ahead to the general election, some Michigan political insiders question whether Karamo will be able to widen her support outside of Trump's base, considering the range of controversial views she has already voiced.

She appeared at a QAnon-adjacent rally last year, and she has said she believes the conspiracy theory that left-wing activists were behind the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

"Every ad from April 24 through November is going to say 'QAnon Karamo is too crazy for us,' " said state Rep. Beau LaFave, a Republican who ran for secretary of state against Karamo, before Saturday's vote.

 

It's amusing that anyone on Earth, let alone America, believes for a microsecond that embrace of the Big Lie, Q-ball conspiracy theories, and denial of evolution will somehow stop Republicans from voting for Karamo in Michigan, or stopping any of the Big Lie candidates in other states in November. They will vote for awful people in order to stop Democrats from winning.

 

And the awful people they elect in 2022 will make sure no Democrat whatsoever can win in 2024 in those states either.

Sunday Long Read: Small Change, Big Changes

In our Sunday Long Read this week, The Guardian's Tom Lamont explores the world of vending machines, the original "contactless" delivery method, in the age of tech dominance, drone delivery, internet metadata and the pandemic.

A minute before midnight on 21 July 2021, as passengers staggered sleepily through Manchester airport, I stood wringing my hands in the glow of a vending machine that was seven feet tall, conspicuously branded with the name of its owner – BRODERICK – and positioned like a clever trap between arrivals and the taxi rank. Standard agonies. Sweet or savoury? Liquid or something to munch? I opted for Doritos, keying in a three-digit code and touching my card to the reader so that the packet moved jerkily forwards, propelled by a churning plastic spiral and tipped into the well of the machine. My Doritos landed with a thwap, a sound that always brings relief to the vending enthusiast, because there hasn’t been a mechanical miscue. Judged by the clock, which now read 12am, it was the UK’s first vending-machine sale of the day.

Nine hours later, I was sitting in a spruce office in the Manchester suburb of Wythenshawe, drinking coffee with John “Johnny Brod” Broderick, the man who owned and operated that handsome airport machine. I’d had an idea to try to capture 24 hours in the life of vending machines. These weird, conspicuous objects! With their backs against the wall of everyday existence, they tempt out such a peculiar range of emotions, from relief to frustration, condescension to childish glee. For decades I’d been a steady and unquestioning patron. I figured that by spending some time in the closer company of the machines and their keepers, by immersing myself in their history, by looking to their future, I might get to the bottom of their enduring appeal. What made entrepreneurs from the Victorian age onwards want to hawk their goods in this way? What made generations of us buy? Johnny Brod seemed a good first person to ask.

Freckle-tanned, portly and quick to laugh, Broderick has a playful exterior that conceals the fiery heart of a vending fundamentalist. He is a man so invested in the roboticised transmission of snacks that, come Halloween, Johnny Brod has been known to park a machine full of sweets in his driveway, letting any costumed local kids issue their demand for treats via prodded forefinger. With his brother Peter and his father, John Sr, he runs the vending empire Broderick’s Ltd, its 2,800 machines occupying some of the most sought-after corridors and crannies of the UK. The Broderick family sugar and sustain office workers, factory workers, students, gym goers, shoppers and schoolchildren. They pep up breaktimes in a nuclear power station. If you’ve ever wolfed a postpartum Snickers in the maternity ward at Chesterfield or Leeds General, or turned thirsty while waiting to fly out of Stansted or Birmingham airports, then you’ve almost certainly shopped, at one mechanical remove, with Johnny Brod. He thanks you.

The coffee we drank that morning had trickled into cardboard cups from one of his own hot-beverage makers. Business had been hurt badly by Covid, he said. There had been one wretched day in the spring of 2020 when he awoke to find himself not the owner of the second-largest fleet of vending machines in the UK, but instead, of “timebombs. All these machines of ours in places we couldn’t access. All full of perishable food.” After enduring months of closed workplaces, abandoned airports and dead campuses, the Brodericks had lost millions on foregone Twirls and Mini Cheddars. Even so, Johnny Brod was bullish, insisting that the pandemic presented him with opportunities, too.

As he led me on a tour of his Wythenshawe headquarters, I told him about my early hours purchase from a Broderick machine at the airport. Talk about a smooth transaction, I said. No snagging! I imagined he would be pleased to hear this, but he twitched his head in frustration, as if at a grave breach of etiquette. Vending people hated it, he explained to me, this unexamined expectation of mechanical failure. Modern machines contained many failsafes against botched vends. Despite this, the one time that Johnny Brod could remember his beloved industry trending on Twitter, a cruel joke had done the rounds. “About change being inevitable. Except from a vending machine.”

Every one of his machines, he countered, was fitted with a contactless card reader. Since Covid, people didn’t want to touch anything they didn’t have to. Big change was sweeping through automated vending, and the first thing to go was small change. As cash sales tumbled in 2020 and 2021, and contactless sales climbed, the Brodericks had been the beneficiary of new and better information about their customers. Pre-Covid, not only did they have to go and fetch someone’s coppery quid, then count it – they didn’t even know whose quid it was. Now the tycoons of vending understood us better. Johnny Brod had released a smartphone app that tempted people with discounts in return for permission to track their vending habits.

He led us into a control room that had large screens mounted on the walls and employees arranged Nasa-style, facing screens on which stationary dots and travelling arrows identified thousands of vending machines and the technicians who roved between them. We watched a live ticking record of the day’s sales activity, north to Aberdeen, south to the Isle of Wight. A couple of quick clicks on a technician’s computer and we were marvelling at the snacking history of a loyal, I would say fanatical, Broderick customer in Manchester, someone who must have been sourcing two full meals a day from behind glass. While Johnny Brod made a note to slip this customer a thank-you tenner via the app, I asked his team if they’d be able to find the record of my midnight Doritos. A few keyboard taps and there it was.

The Doritos fell from their spiral at midnight, closely followed by a sachet of peanut M&Ms, a stubby Mars and a bottle of water. What happened next in the wider world of these machines? I contacted a number of Johnny Brod’s competitors, outfits of all sizes, and asked them to share with me similar sales data for that day in July. I enlisted volunteers to help me track vending activity around the globe. Everywhere mouths watered, spirals turned. A world of people bent double, their hands patting blindly inside retrieval wells, claiming juice boxes, cola bottles, cereal bars, gum, whatever they’d bought, whatever they craved.

 

Turns out being able to get anything you want from a vending machine at whatever time of day or night is something the world has in common. Insert a few minutes into the slot and enjoy the story.

Utahn Me Out

Having finally accepted that the Democratic party in Utah has been dead for years, apparently we're not even bothering with a Senate candidate and instead officially backing independent failed third-party presidential gadfly Evan McMullin to run against GOP Sen. Mike "Suddenly Sedition" Lee.

In an extraordinary move on Saturday, Utah Democrats voted to back independent candidate Evan McMullin over Democrat Kael Weston to challenge the winner of the Republican primary later this year.

At the Utah Democratic Convention at Cottonwood High School in Murray, McMullin received 782 of the delegate’s votes, nearly 57%, to Weston’s 594 votes, according to preliminary results.

It’s an unprecedented measure for Utah’s Democrats, who grappled between party loyalty or backing an outsider to increase the likelihood of defeating a Republican in November. The Democrats were motivated by the prospect of unseating Sen. Mike Lee, who is running for his third term this year, and won the support of Republican around 75% of delegates at his party’s convention.

Lee still needs to defeat challengers Ally Isom and Becky Edwards in his June primary to face McMullin in the general election.

“Democrats are putting country over party,” McMullin said after the vote. “This is our democracy and, yes, it can be messy at times as we saw today, but it’s sure a heck of a lot better than the alternative.”

Weston said he accepted the outcome of what delegates decided and that it sparked an important dialogue.

“Of course, you want to be the candidate that walks out with a unanimous degree of support, but I knew this was always going to be an important conversation to have and I think with a great team, and a lot of supporters who drove from all across the state, it was a real conversation,” Weston said. “Today was a crossroads and a certain path was taken. It’s a path that has not been taken before.”

 

If you're wondering how we got here, understand that Democrats in many red states have decided that it's time to do whatever it takes to stop sitting Republican seditionist traitors like Mike Lee. It's also a tacit admission that the Democratic party brand is so toxic in 40 out of 50 states or so (and on life support in the other 10) that the only coalition-building criteria is "not Republican but that's a huge chunk of real estate".

 

On the other hand a moribund Team Blue isn't exactly a recent development in Utah, a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since before I was born.

 

If it takes Evan McMullin to unseat Mike Lee, great. In reality, I figure it means he might only lose by 15 points instead of 25, much like Democrats here in Kentucky.

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

Republicans don't want free and fair elections, they want elections where they control the election process and they always win, and anyone who doesn't go along with creating false election results is punished.

A local Republican Party leader in North Carolina threatened to get a county elections director fired or have her pay cut unless she helped him gain illegal access to voting equipment, the state elections board told Reuters.

The party official, William Keith Senter, sought evidence to support false conspiracy theories alleging the 2020 election was rigged against former U.S. President Donald Trump. The previously unreported incident is part of a national effort by Trump supporters to audit voting systems to bolster the baseless stolen-election claims.

Senter, chair of the Surry County Republican Party, told elections director Michella Huff that he would ensure she lost her job if she refused his demand to access the county's vote tabulators, the North Carolina State Board of Elections said in written responses to questions from Reuters. Senter was "aggressive, threatening, and hostile," in two meetings with Huff, the state elections board said, citing witness accounts.

Senter did not respond to requests for comment.

Huff, who refused Senter's demands, was disturbed by the incident of political intimidation. Such threats have become common nationwide since the 2020 election. Reuters has documented more than 900 threatening or hostile messages aimed at election officials in a series of investigative reports.

"It’s a shame, that it is being normalized," Huff told Reuters. "I didn’t expect to get it here in our county. We are just trying to do our job by the law."

Senter's demands are a potential violation of state law. In a legal memo responding to community calls for a "forensic audit" of voting machines, Mark Payne, an attorney retained by the Surry County Board of Elections, wrote this week that it was illegal to provide access to voting machines to unauthorized individuals. Anyone threatens or intimidates an election officer could also face felony charges, according to a state statute.

Senter and a prominent pro-Trump election conspiracist, Douglas Frank, met with Huff on March 28, claiming “there was a 'chip' in the voting machines that pinged a cellular phone tower on Nov. 3, 2020, and somehow influenced election results," the state election board said, calling the claim “fabricated disinformation.” Separately, in a public gathering that Huff did not attend, Senter threatened to have Huff's pay cut, according to Huff, who said a person at the meeting told her about the threat.

Two days before meeting with Huff, Frank gave a speech in Dobson, a town in the rural county of 72,000 people on the northern border with Virginia, where he spoke about "debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election," the board said. The day after the meeting, Frank, an Ohio math teacher, thanked his "patriot" hosts in a post to the messaging app Telegram about his trip to North Carolina and said he was "leaving behind a bonfire burning in good hands.”

Frank did not respond to requests for comment. 

 

Multiple state GOP parties are controlled by people who believe there was massive election fraud in their state, even in the states Trump won. The fact that red state Democrats exist is proof enough of widespread fraud, you see. And they'll do anything to "find" this fraud.

And if you think anyone in these state parties will be punished, you're fooling yourself. Meanwhile, ground beef is $5 a pound, so we're apparently going to hand the country right back to the people who believe democracies are a nuisance on the way to fascism.

As of this writing, redistricting remains incomplete in Florida, Missouri, and New Hampshire. However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume the following: 1. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) gets his way, and Republican state legislators approve his recently proposed map, where we’d rate 20 districts at least leaning Republican and 8 at least leaning Democratic; 2. Missouri eventually adopts a map that preserves 6 Republican-leaning seats and 2 Democratic-leaning ones; and 3. New Hampshire passes a map with 1 Democratic-leaning seat and 1 Toss-up.

If that happens, and no other state maps change due to legal action, here would be our topline ratings: 210 seats would be rated Safe, Likely, or Leans Republican, 198 would be rated Safe, Likely, or Leans Democratic, and 27 would be rated as Toss-ups.

Given the political environment, we’d expect Republicans to do quite well among the Toss-up races. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, they win 20 of the 27. That would result in a 230-205 Republican House, or a net gain of 17 from what Republicans won in 2020.

To be honest, that seems a little light in terms of Republican gains. If we had to guess, today, what Republicans would net in the House, we’d probably pick a number in the 20s. So that means our ratings are probably at least a little bit friendlier to Democrats than perhaps they should be. However, we do have several more seats rated Leans Democratic (15) compared to Leans Republican (8), which is one way of indicating how the playing field could grow. On the other hand, our ratings also reflect the possibility of a Democratic comeback in which they limit Republican advances.

Still, don’t be surprised to see more House updates from us later this year in which all or nearly all of the changes are in favor of Republicans. It’s just that kind of cycle, at least for the time being.

 

For the love of God, fight back or die.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Another court filing by the January 6th Committee has revealed more devastating evidence against sitting GOP members of Congress and their role in participating in the conspiracy to overthrow the American government.

Republican members of Congress were heavily involved in calls and meetings with former President Donald Trump and his top aides as they devised a strategy to overturn the election in December 2020, according to new evidence filed in federal court late Friday.

Deposition excerpts filed by the Jan 6. select committee — part of an effort to force former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to appear for an interview — suggest that some of Trump’s top allies in Congress were frequently present in meetings where a handful of strategies to prevent then-President-elect Joe Biden from taking office were discussed, including efforts to replace the leadership of the Justice Department with figures who would sow doubts about the legitimacy of the election.

Lawmakers who attended meetings, in person or by phone, included Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and numerous members of the House Freedom Caucus, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows who provided key testimony about the conversations and meetings Meadows had in December 2020.

The new evidence underscores the expansive cast of elected Republicans who had ultimately enlisted themselves in Trump’s last-ditch effort to cling to power. Members traded theories about ways to push then-Vice President Mike Pence to single-handedly stop Biden’s election, they parried with the White House Counsel’s Office on the boundaries of the law regarding presidential electors and they met directly with Pence’s staff to encourage him to take direct action on Jan. 6, when Congress convened to count electoral votes.

“They felt that he had the authority to — pardon me if my phrasing isn’t correct on this, but — send votes back to the States or the electors back to the States,” Hutchinson recalled.

The disclosure came as part of a Friday evening court filing by the select panel asking a federal court to throw out Meadows’ lawsuit against the committee. In the filing, the select committee revealed that Meadows turned over 2,319 text messages during a brief period of cooperation but withheld more than 1,000, citing various privileges.

“[H]e was not acting as anything like a typical White House Chief of Staff advising the President on official matters of government policy,” House General Counsel Doug Letter wrote. “Mr. Meadows was playing a campaign role, attempting to facilitate a strategy that would have reversed the certified results of the 2020 election.”

The committee indicated that Meadows told Jordan in a text message that he supported efforts to convince Pence to send the election back to the states.

“I have pushed for this. Not sure it is going to happen,” Meadows texted Jordan early in the morning on Jan. 6.

Some of the GOP lawmakers were present in December meetings, Hutchinson recalled, when members of the White House Counsel’s Office raised significant legal doubts about a plan for pro-Trump activists to submit “alternate” electors in states won by Joe Biden.

Others attended a Dec. 21 meeting where Rudy Giuliani, then the president’s personal lawyer, and some associates advocated a plan for Pence to unilaterally refuse to count Biden’s electors and instead send the election back to various GOP-controlled state legislatures to replace Biden’s electors with Trump’s.

 

The conspiracy to defraud the United State and overthrow the government, sedition, is right there in the open, folks. We know it happened because it's still happening. These same people are trying to remove Biden and all Democrats from power. 

The question remains what we choose to do about it. Because if the answer is "nothing" then the days of MAGA bloodshed and violence will only get exponentially worse.

A man was arrested this week for threatening violence over the dictionary definition of “female,” the latest indication of where things are headed in this moment of homophobic and transphobic hate.

According to the Department of Justice, 34-year-old Californian Jeremy David Hanson sent threatening messages to Springfield, Massachusetts-based Merrimack-Webster through the dictionary’s online contact form.

“[Your] headquarters should be shot up and bombed,” Hanson wrote. ”It is sickening that you have caved to the cultural Marxist, anti-science tranny [sic] agenda and altered the definition of ‘female’ as part of the Left’s efforts to corrupt and degrade the English language and deny reality. You evil Marxists should all be killed. It would be poetic justice to have someone storm your offices and shoot up the place, leaving none of you commies alive.”

There’s good reason to take threats like Hanson’s seriously. Street violence against the LGBTQ community is increasing at a time when attempts to marginalize and dehumanize them at the legislative level are snowballing.

In Morrisville, Vermont earlier this month, a trans woman named Fern Feather was stabbed to death; the killing came after escalated anti-trans rhetoric from state GOP leaders (who have since blamed the killing on “defund the police”).

A Florida family beat the boyfriend of their youngest son nearly to death and blinded him—teachers in the state are banned from telling children about the very existence of gay and trans people. The state’s Health Department issued guidance recommending against people under the age of 18 transitioning, even socially; a bill in Missouri (one of a series of laws proposed around the country) would make giving gender-affirming treatment punishable by law.

What Republican want is power, and the ability to used armed force against those out of power to keep them there forever. We're getting closer to that breaking point every day.

A Border Line Jackass

Even Texas Republicans are starting to point the finger at GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, whose week-long pre-Easter truck inspection border stunt cost the state of Texas billions of dollars.

Gov. Greg Abbott increasing inspections of commercial trucks entering from Mexico in the hopes of staunching illegal smuggling activity resulted in zero migrants detentions or illegal drug seizures, despite allegedly costing the Lone Star State billions of dollars.

Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller stated in an email to supporters this week that the enhanced truck inspections cost Texas consumers and businesses an estimated $4.3 billion "despite not catching a single illegal alien or confiscating a single gram of illegal drugs."

"However, Governor Abbott successfully persuaded Mexico states to enhance security on their side of the border," Miller added. "Both of these things are true at the same time."

The Texas Tribune reports that over an eight-day period beginning on April 8, troopers conducted more than 1,400 truck inspections. Despite no drugs being discovered, troopers managed to take 850 trucks off the road for various equipment violations, including under-inflated tires, broken turn signals and oil leaks.

The inspections also created a backlog of 18-wheelers on both sides of the border, with some truckers reporting waiting more than 30 hours for a process that typically takes three hours, according to the Dallas Morning News. The delays resulted in $240 million in spoiled produce and empty shelves at local markets.

Miller's estimate roughly coincides with findings released by The Perryman Group, a Waco-based economic analysis firm, which estimates the delays cost the state $4.2 billion in gross domestic product and the U.S. nearly $9 billion in GDP.

Abbott ordered the enhanced truck inspections in response to President Joe Biden ending Title 42, a border policy that allowed federal agents to quickly deport migrants attempting to enter the country citing COVID-19 restrictions. Last week, the Republican leader called off the inspection initiative after signing agreements with leaders of four Mexican states that border Texas who said they would increase border security measures.

Despite the economic impacts of shutting down traffic at the border, Abbott isn't ruling out reinstating the policy. Asked about the impacts during a roundtable with law enforcement in San Antonio Thursday, Abbott responded, "Obviously there are concerns about the economy but there are even larger concerns about the unabated immigration that the Biden administration is promoting."

 

There's no doubt in my mind that Abbott will do this again.  He's learned that he can damage the economy, make national news, blame Biden for it, and suffer no consequences for doing so, and that he can basically do it at will. And considering the number of Democrats now openly running against Biden ending Title 42, he knows he can use it to put House and Senate Democrats on the spot this fall.

No, Abbott now knows he can do ten billion dollars in economic damage a week with a stroke of his pen. He'll use that ability again and again and again to hurt as many people as possible until the White House gives him whatever he wants.

Terrorism, you see.

America Goes Viral Yet Again, Con't

Last week after rising COVID Omicron variant cases triggered indoor mask mandate rules in Philadelphia, this week's figures have dropped low enough that the mask mandate has been lifted after just four days.

 

Just days after re-imposing the indoor mask mandate in Philadelphia, city officials confirmed Thursday night that they will end the requirement, citing improving numbers for COVID-19 hospitalizations and confirmed infections.

A city spokesperson said officials will release more details Friday morning.

“Due to decreasing hospitalizations and a leveling of case counts, the City will move to strongly recommending masks in indoor public spaces as opposed to a mask mandate. Given the latest data, the Board of Health voted tonight to rescind the mandate,” Kevin Lessard, spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney, said in an email Thursday night.

Earlier on Thursday, Kenney defended the controversial mandate that has made his city an outlier in the national COVID-19 response.

”I have committed through this whole dilemma, this whole pandemic, to follow the guidance of health professionals,” Kenney said Thursday in a video interview with the Washington Post, indicating, “and that’s what we’re doing here.”

Kenney expressed hope that slightly declining hospitalization rates could be a sign the requirement is already showing positive results.

The number of people with COVID in city hospitals dropped to 65 Thursday, the lowest figure reported in a week.

The recent peak of 82 was reached Sunday, the day before the mask mandate took effect.

The return of the Philadelphia mandate on Monday collided with a federal judge’s ruling that lifted the federal mask requirement on flights and mass transportation.

The conflicting rules led to confusion and frustration exacerbated when SEPTA said they would follow the judge’s order and end masking on trains, trolleys, and buses, as well as in stations and concourses. Philadelphia International Airport said masks would be required in terminals because of the city restriction, although coverings could be removed on planes, because airlines lifted their requirements.

On Wednesday, a group of Philadelphia business owners and residents filed a motion seeking an emergency injunction with Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court to immediately suspend the mandate, arguing that the restriction was causing them “irreparable harm.”

The federal government also filed a notice of appeal Wednesday for the ruling on masking on transportation.

 

Mayor Kenney's mandate would have certainly been enjoined given the federal mandate being lifted by a Trump judge this week, so he would have lost on both politics and legality.

The decision for America to just live with an extra 500,000 deaths per year due to COVID was made some time ago, and no government, local, state, or federal, will take responsibility for stopping it, because the American people won't put up with the inconvenience anymore.

I'd say we deserve it, except we're talking about thousands of dead per week.

A Strange Meadows Lark

Washington Post media reporter and fact check columnist Glenn Kessler lays out the case of voting fraud against former Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

After Donald Trump lost the presidential election, falsely claiming election fraud, Meadows became senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), which promotes “election integrity” efforts. The organization’s “citizen’s guide” urges activists to determine that the registrations of their neighbors are legal by checking on “whether voters have moved, or if the registrations are PO Boxes, commercial addresses or vacant lots” and then “obtaining evidence: photos of commercial buildings? Vacant lots?” and “securing affidavits from current residents that a registered voter has moved.”

Voter-list maintenance is one of the dividing lines in American politics. Republicans argue that if voter-registration records are not regularly purged and updated, election fraud can take place. Democrats push back that too many voter-list purges are conducted haphazardly, removing eligible voters who don’t learn they are no longer listed until they show up to vote.

Now it turns out that until last week, Meadows was simultaneously registered to vote in three different states — North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina — according to state records obtained by The Fact Checker.

The overlap lasted about three weeks, and it might have continued if revelations about Meadows’s voting record had not attracted scrutiny in North Carolina. Meadows is still registered in Virginia and South Carolina.

This is the latest in a series of revelations about election-related behavior by Meadows that appear to contradict his and his party’s rhetoric on election integrity.

Meadows, in fact, was the keynote speaker at a CPI Election Integrity Summit in Atlanta on Feb. 19. “What you’re doing is investing in the future of our country and making sure only legal votes count,” Meadows told attendees. He said he had just gotten off the phone with Trump, who he said had told him: “We cannot give up on election integrity.”

About three weeks after that speech, the New Yorker reported that Meadows had registered to vote at a home where he did not reside. Meadows and his wife, Debra, had submitted voter registration forms that listed as their residential address a 14-by-62-foot mobile home in Macon County, N.C., with a rusted metal roof that sold for $105,000 in 2021, even though they did not actually own it or live there. He then voted in the 2020 election via absentee ballot.

North Carolina officials announced last month that, as a result, Mark Meadows is under investigation for potential voter fraud. On April 11, his voter registration was removed by Macon County officials, the North Carolina State Board of Elections said last week.

The state cited the fact that Meadows had voted in Virginia during the 2021 gubernatorial election that elected a Republican, Glenn Youngkin. Meadows and his wife had registered to vote in the state in September, his and her voter registration applications show, even though they were still registered in North Carolina.

About two weeks after publication of the New Yorker article, Meadows registered to vote in South Carolina, state election records show. In July 2021, Meadows had purchased a three-story waterfront home of more than 6,000 square feet in South Carolina for nearly $1.6 million. But until this year, he also owned a townhouse in Alexandria that he had purchased in 2017.

It is not unusual for some overlap in voter rolls as people move across state lines, and many people do not bother to terminate their voting registration when they move. In contrast to Meadows, however, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo canceled his voter registration in Kansas just a few months after selling his home in Wichita and moving to McLean when he became CIA director.

South Carolina and Virginia are members of the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit that provides member states with reports on voters. If Meadows had listed his Virginia voter registration while registering in South Carolina, the state would have notified Virginia. Angie Maniglia Turner, Alexandria’s general registrar and director of elections, said Thursday that there has been no change in the voter registration status in Virginia of either Mark or Debra Meadows.

Ben Williamson, a spokesman for Mark Meadows, declined to comment.

 

Republicans cheered when Crystal Mason, a Black woman in Texas, was sentenced to five years in prison for unknowingly trying to vote while ineligible, but a white Republican Trumper registers to vote in three states knowingly in order to game the system on purpose will at most face a small fine if anything.

They can do whatever they want to. The rest of us are subject to actual laws that they impose upon us in the name of "integrity".